Fuel Range - 620

[ollie]

I searched the main board but figures seemed to vary considerbly, for those of you who have owned or had anything to do with the little 620, How many Km's did you get out of tank before you were pushing?, I seem to recall a thread about matty running his old bike dry.

On my bike, with lets say fairly sprited riding, the orange light tends to come on around 180km and I usually head for the nearest petrol station soon after. How far can i risk it ?

[mattyvas]

Hey Ollie,

    Yep ran dry just before I sold it.
got just up to 240k's but that was on the back end of a long run from Gouldburn heading home from WSBK.
normally I'd get 200 before I filled up with the orange light coming on at where you said around 180.
You might well stretch it to 220 but I'd be looking for a fuel stop pretty quickly at that point.

cheers
Matty...

[Betty]

 

I was on Jukie's 620 and came to a stop on a slight downhill ... saw the light flash on and headed for the servo ... 268km at that point.

I think the only certainty is variable fuel consumption.

[bigiain]

Hey Ollie,

    Yep ran dry just before I sold it.
got just up to 240k's but that was on the back end of a long run from Gouldburn heading home from WSBK.
normally I'd get 200 before I filled up with the orange light coming on at where you said around 180.
You might well stretch it to 220 but I'd be looking for a fuel stop pretty quickly at that point.

I don't suppose you know how much fuel you put into it when it was dry (I seem to remember asking you at the time and you couldn't tell 'cause you got some fuel from a jerry can so the amount you put in wasn't easy to measure?)

My clapped out old 250k+ km 11 year old M750 still reliably gets over 300km to a ~17L tank. I filled it at 296km this morning and only put 15.4L into it. The needle jets in the carbs oval out over time, and when my calculated range-to-empty drops much below 280km it's getting on for time to replace them - I got as low as ~240 to dry before the last needle jet change, I was using just over 7.2L/100km then, with the new needle jets in I was getting under 4.9L/100km, that'll give me almost 350km before it runs dry.

I do get about 15% variation on my regular fuel consumption though, even at times when there's no obvious (I've been having _too much fun!_) reason for it. I suspect at least some of it is sometimes filling up with BP "may contain up to 10% ethanol" unleaded, but it's not always attributable to that - sometimes I just don't have as much fuel left as I expect - the week before last I filled at 304km and the pump said I got 17.3L in - I've put less fuel in than that when it's stopped running! There can't have been _much_ left in there. But this morning at 296km I had over a liter and a half left, so could have gotten another 30 or 40km out of it...

Since my low fuel light hasn't worked in about 10 years, my approach is to always to a little mental arithmetic every time I fill up, and calculate (approximately) how much fuel I had left in the tank (based on a 17L capacity which I know is slightly conservative) and then approximate how much further the about would have got me (to a first approximation 20km per L is easy enough to guestimate) - I then keep that running estimate in my head and aim to fill up "in time" - at the moment I'm averaging calculations of 330 or 340km per tank, with occasional minimas of close to 300km, so I'm not pushing it past 300 or so (and I'll admit if I wasn't riding past a servo every 500m or so this morning I would have stopped earlier than the 296km I filled up at this morning.

On a trip, I'll usually aim to fill up at 200km intervals, less if I know there's any likelyhood of there being limited fuel availability past the next servo...

big

[ollie]

the week before last I filled at 304km and the pump said I got 17.3L in - I've put less fuel in than that when it's stopped running! There can't have been _much_ left in there. But this morning at 296km I had over a liter and a half left, so could have gotten another 30 or 40km out of it...

What is the Tank capacity on a 620, for some reason I thought it was 14L , I looked in the owners manual but couldn't find it anywhere

ollie

[bigiain]

What is the Tank capacity on a 620, for some reason I thought it was 14L , I looked in the owners manual but couldn't find it anywhere

The '06 owners manual says 14L (including 300ml of reserve).

That _ought_ to get you 280km per tank pretty easily, but I'd probably be aiming for 250km around town (where there's _always_ another servo within 5 or 10km, and I'd plan 180-200km stops on trips.

I'd be using my trick of regularly estimating _actual_ "range till dry" every time I filled up still though - a "good enough" estimate will be subtract how much fuel the pump says it took to fill up from 14L, multiply that by 20km*, and add that to the trip meter reading (you _do_ reset the trip meter every time you fill up, right?). That'd get you within a few km of your run-dry-range. (So if you put 12.2L in at 240km, you get ((14-12.2) * 20) +240 or (1.8*20) + 240, or 36+240 = 276km - Apply whatever safety margin you consider appropriate to that (keeping in mind I often see up to 15% variations, you _might_ one day run dry at less than 240km based on those numbers...)

big

* and you can regularly refine that 20km per L estimate I'm using too if you want to do a bit more arithmetic - those made up numbers I used end up a touch under 20km/L, 19.67 to be exact, but that's only going to knock 1.8*0.33km or just under 600m off the total range estimate - like I said, close enough...

[mattyvas]

Yeah I think all EFI Monsters are a 14ltr tank.

Big I'm guessing it was around 12.5 ltrs I filled when it ran dry.
Usually the fill is 10+ ltrs in the new fandangled Monster, I have never put more than 11 ltrs in when riding into the servo.
Coasting in I'm guessing your putting around 12-ish....

[bigiain]

Yeah I think all EFI Monsters are a 14ltr tank.

Big I'm guessing it was around 12.5 ltrs I filled when it ran dry.
Usually the fill is 10+ ltrs in the new fandangled Monster, I have never put more than 11 ltrs in when riding into the servo.
Coasting in I'm guessing your putting around 12-ish....

Yeah - one other problem the FI bikes have that the dinosaur carbed ones don't is that the rely of the fuel to cool the fuel pump, so they build em so they won't run completely dry - sounds like they want 2L or so sloshing round in the bottom to stop the fuel pump overheating.

Those numbers make sense too - the S4R and RS guys must be using 6 or 6.5L per 100km (and getting twice as much peak power as my 750 makes using 5L/100km) which fits in with reports of as low as 180km to dry for the richer running examples. 6L/100 would give you 200km to dry from 12L and 6.5 would have you stopping at ~180km - which is what I hear people seeing in real life. I think Trev had some numbers from before and after fitting the DP ecu, but can't remember enough details...

big

[ducsport]

Ollie, my 620 is not a monster, but it does have a 14L tank. My experience is the same as Matty's. I get between 180 and 200 km before the light comes on (depending on how spirited the riding has been  ), and have not pushed past 220 km. The most I have ever fitted into the tank is however 12.5 litres, which backs up Big's 2l_of_fuel_pump_cooling_sloshing_around theory. cheers, ducsport

[Betty]

I think the S4RS/T guys are averaging less than 180km per tank, anecdotal evidence would suggest up to 180km. At least you have given them an alternative for longer distances Big ... they need to trade-up to a 'clapped out 750' (no disrespect intended).

I remember getting 255 out of my iddy-biddy plastic tank and the light had been on for at least 30km but was still going. I generally don't ride in traffic but I do ride like an old granny. I usually fill up around 200km or if I know there is some distance to the next fuel stop - low fuel light or not.